NPR’s Critics–and the Critics Who Actually Listen

I also got a call last week from Ralph Nader. He was saying how NPR is really just a corporate toady, and that they don’t have enough progressive voices on, and I hear that quite a bit. I hear that more from people who actually listen to NPR.

Funny how that works.

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Extra! Magazine Editor Since 1990, Jim Naureckas has been the editor of Extra!, FAIR's monthly journal of media criticism. He is the co-author of The Way Things Aren't: Rush Limbaugh's Reign of Error, and co-editor of The FAIR Reader: An Extra! Review of Press and Politics in the '90s. He is also the co-manager of FAIR's website. He has worked as an investigative reporter for the newspaper In These Times, where he covered the Iran-Contra scandal, and was managing editor of the Washington Report on the Hemisphere, a newsletter on Latin America. Jim was born in Libertyville, Illinois, in 1964, and graduated from Stanford University in 1985 with a bachelor's degree in political science. Since 1997 he has been married to Janine Jackson, FAIR's program director. You can follow Jim on Twitter at @JNaureckas.

NPR is anything but a “corporate toady.” NPR uncovered how Merrill Lynch’s traders destroyed their company by buying its own risky products. NPR showed how Wall Street lobbyists were disguising themselves as small businesses. NPR has relentlessly covered Massey Energy’s horrendous safety record as well as BP’s attempt to get workers on the Deepwater Horizon drilling well to sign nondisclosure forms immediately after the incident. Recently they have covered abuses in the private prison industry. Their coverage of the debate over Net Neutrality, the Iraq War, and regulatory issues all included progressive critics of the Obama administration. These criticisms are completely unfounded.

The entire article is framed in the false language of “deficit reduction”. Nowhere will you find the true issues – the ongoing concentration of wealth and the attack on the poor and middle class – discussed.

NPR may cover some atypical mainstream topics, but so much of its reporting winds up selling out the progressive analysis. The most progressive program on NPR, at least in NY, is Alternative Radio. That is the progressive voice that I hear on this station. The vast majority of the rest of it is silly pap or discussions that promote mainstream thinking. Their medical programs are pure corporate medical industry garbage. The news is barely liberal, much less progressive.

All that critical stuff being said, I am still glad that NPR is there because it maintains the promise of getting our progressive voice heard. There is no possibility on most other stations.

The real benefit to NPR news is that they produce news articles of 4 – 5 minutes in length. This is enough time to actually allow a listener to think about what they’re saying and formulate an opinion based on prior knowledge. The corporate news spends – what – 15 – 45 seconds per item then segues into something else. (Neil Postman in Amusing Ourselves to Death called this the “and now this” syndrome.) It does not give the listener any time to think about what is being said.

Try it at home. Listen to a corporate news item then try to think about it while the newscaster carries on with the next item. It is difficult without turning down the sound. The mind wants to focus on the immediate.

NPR has let some real buffoons tell outright lies without challenge from the interviewer. Yet, the news format lets us think about what we are hearing and recognize the lies.

NPR is not liberal. There is not a time when they go against corporate interests. As an independent musician, artist, writer, filmmaker and zinester (independent media source) I know that NPR will not talk about any aspect of corporate control of the arts and media, or those advocates against corporate control, or any of the artists opposed to corporate control.
It’s corporations that ultimately control NPR content.
For those who think I’m wrong, this is easy to refute. Find the anti corporate news on NPR. Good luck.

Dean Baker has an interesting take on a couple of stories on an NPR station in DC, WAMU and their show called Power Breakfast and I completely agree with him, for I heard the very same shows and had a similar take on it, often their take on the topic is a false dichotomy.
From Dean Baker at his website.
“WAMU, my local NPR affiliate, had an especially appalling segment of “Power Breakfast” this morning. The segment highlighted a congressional hearing on the topic of financial literacy and then commented on the obvious irony.”
“Of course there is no obvious irony to anyone who has ever learned any economics. The government’s large deficit (presumably the source of Power Breakfast’s “irony”) is supporting the economy right now. This spending is needed because the collapse of the housing bubble created a gap of more than $1.2 trillion in annual demand in the economy. Anyone who thinks that the government should balance its budget right now wants to throw millions more people out of work.”
“Our Power Breakfast crew might not understand enough economics to realize this fact, but that does not change the truth of the matter. It is of course ironic that someone who knows nothing about economics can have a job reporting on it, while millions of people who can do their jobs are going unemployed.”

And on another day, another false dichotomy from WAMU NPR:

Power Breakfast: Presents Debate on Evolution and the Shape of the Earth
Thursday, 17 March 2011 04:37
“The Power Breakfast segment this morning on WAMU, my local NPR affiliate, told listeners that the debate on reducing the country’s dependence on foreign energy was between people who wanted to increase supply by increased drilling and those who favored conservation. This is not true. There is not enough reserves of oil or gas to make more than a small difference in U.S. dependence on imported energy.”
“A news organization would point this fact out, since it is the job of reporters to know this fact. Unlike listeners, they are paid to know this information. Unfortunately, Power Breakfast led listeners to believe that the country has an option of being energy independent if it were only willing to put its environment at risk. While increased drilling may be able to wreck the environment it can have no noticeable effect on the country’s need for foreign oil. Reporters old enough to remember the BP spill in the Gulf understand what is at issue.”

Don’t get me wrong I support WAMU, I like NPR in the same way I like this country, as an adult. When they do something I think is wrong, I criticise them for it and point out where I think they are wrong. Unlike a Rethugnut’s 4 yr old responsive like of his country, “Amurka, luv it ur leave it.” They do not see an America that is wrong, just the Democrats and the liberals, or progressives criticising it.

NPR never aggressivly attacks the wrongs of it’s corporate sponsers. Did or Does Merrill Lynch, or Massey Mines donate to NPR? Corporate pap is the norm for public Affairs progarming at NPR. They just give it more than the 30 second sound bite than cable news does. Link TV and Democracy Now is where one finds hard hitting truth, news and documentaries that cable networks and NPR and public TV have no interest in. No corporate funding there. What a difference. Makes NPR look like Fox News. I especially liked David V Monsanto.

As a longtime media-reform activist and retired staffer from a major market PBS station, I’m always wary of organizations and individuals who make vague, blanket statements about public broadcasters and their programs. In this CJR (Columbia Journalism Review) instance, FAIR and Mr. Nader are cases in point.

Currently NPR is producing or acquiring and distributing 14 news and public affairs programs to over 900 local NPR affiliates: All Things Considered, The Diane Rehm Show, Fresh Air, Intelligence Squared US, Latino USA, Morning Edition, On The Media, Only A Game, On Point, State of the Reunion, Talk of the Nation, Tell Me More, Weekend Edition Saturday, and Weekend Edition Sunday.

Currently one NPR affiliate, MPR (Minnesota Public Radio), is producing or acquiring and distributing 18 non-NPR news and public affairs program to 37 MPR stations in Minnesota, South Dakota, Wisconsin and Upper Michigan. The programs include MPR News sections of NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered, the BBC World Service, the BBC/WGBH The World, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation As It Happens.

The other 900 NPR affiliates are also producing or acquiring and distributing non-NPR news and public affairs programs.

A “toady” is defined as “a person who flatters or defers to others for self-serving reasons.” Who among the staffers of NPR and its 900-plus affiliates are “corporate toadies”; to which of their thousands of programs–assuming they’ve carefully reviewed a representative sample of them–are FAIR and Mr. Nader referring; and what is their definition of a “progressive”?

FAIR omitted the rest of the NPR ombudsman’s statement in that quoted CJR interview paragraph, which ends with: “I have taken to asking, when someone is calling, do you listen to public radio? And what station do you listen to? Because sometimes they\’re motivated by blogs: somebody might say, here\’s a way to contact the ombudsman.” Could FAIR be one of those “blogs”?

It also omitted this interview question and the ombudsman’s response to it: “Do you think there are actual foolproof ways of calculating whether a news organization is biased?”

“Absolutely not. There are several sociological, psychological theories that seem to connect to how people perceive the news. If someone is convinced that NPR is to the right or to the leftÃƒÆ’Â¢ÃƒÂ¢”Å¡Â¬”Âand believe me, I get quite a lot of complaints that NPR is too far to the rightÃƒÆ’Â¢ÃƒÂ¢”Å¡Â¬”Âthat is how they will hear NPR programming. I could hire a social scientist of impeccable degree who would come up with some measurement and markers that are easily replicable and have them analyze NPR\’s content, and I don\’t think that that would allay anyone\’s concerns. It seems to me that when people have very strong feelings they are very resistant to something that contradicts what they feel. I know that sounds very defensive, but it\’s just being realistic.”

Thank you Richard Dechert for your thoughtful reply. Although I do not believe a progressive view to many issues is given (which frustrates me), I listen daily to several of the programs you mentioned. At least I get a larger context. As we (in my case) are dues paying listeners, we should keep up a constant push to get progressive views aired more often.

Everyone who defends NPR should subscribe to the “Readers Digest” as well. They forget Kenneth Tomlinsen, previous editor of Readers Digest was appointed by George M. Bush to head up CPB, Corporation of Public Broadcasting, in 1980. Tomlinson started replacing employees and programs with the same conservative format as Readers Digest. I now call NPR the “Readers Digest of the Air Ways”. To call NPR liberal media is like calling corporate media liberal. The defenders are not listening well. Count how many Republican politicians and GOP Agenda are covered now. Ralph Nader is absolutely correct.

Mr. Dechert: I’ve listened to NPR’s programming on MN Public Radio for almost 40 years. I was an MPR member for most of the first 20 years. Then I started to notice that both NPR and MPR seemed to exhibit a propensity for bending over backwards to give coverage to conservative viewpoints, often without offering any opposing views. It happened around the same time that the Conservative Movement was really starting to push the myth of the so-called liberal media (and, incidentally, at the same time I was moderating somewhat my own very liberal views). I figured they were doing what the corporate media were doing: trying hard not to be considered part of that myth. I didn’t really think they were afraid to offend their corporate sponsors (though that seems to be more evident to me now). I just thought they were afraid to be considered not balanced or not unbiased because it would be unprofessional, and therefore they went overboard with coverage of conservative viewpoints just to be sure.

I started to call MPR (and write to NPR) most of the times that I heard them doing this (one can call MPR and leave a message 24 hours a day). I had solid, repeated evidence of this conservative bias. I gave them specific instances. No “vague, blanket statements.” I had to call them AT LEAST once a week (I had a lot of extra time then). I’m sure they thought I was a crackpot, but I wanted to make the point that it was a regular trend I was noticing, and not just a few isolated incidents that could be explained away somehow. This was before I was aware of FAIR or any other media-watchdog groups. I wasn’t influenced by anybody. I talked with MPR editors and producers a few times and they were of course very defensive, and would never say, “hmmm, thanks, we’ll take a look at that.” It was because I noticed this trend that I checked out FAIR, and we probably all know about FAIR’s research that has shown my perceptions to be true.

I don’t know now why they continue to do it. Probably a combination of the above-mentioned reasons (also because I’m guessing there are at least a few conservatives on staff who don’t get edited, like (I’m surmising) the news writers on the weekends at MPR — there’s absolutely blatant bias sometimes then).

In the past week I have heard many more conservatives than progressives on NPR talking about the budget, including the very blatant puff piece on how wonderful Paul Ryan is, and then several days later, an interview with Ryan (without any analysis or opposing views). And, as FAIR has been pointing out, NPR like the corporate media, have been sounding like it’s a given that most of the country bend with the prevailing conservative winds.

I agree with the perception that NPR (New Promoters for Republicans) has not lived up to it’s own hype. I’m specifically talking about the commercial and self-congratulatory segments that appear almost every 10 minutes. This does not include the promotional segments on other programs or numerous musical interludes, business reporting segments interspersed throughout the drive time news (morning report, tech report, planet money, local business – wow) that in many cases are free infomercials. In my case (WNPR) in New Haven now has almost monthly fundraisers as they repeat (delusionaly IMO) that they are commercial free as they proceed to tell us the name, contact information, product, and branding jingle of their sponsors. NPR itself is on a branding campaign. This campaign lives very little time to report any actual well-researched events that impact the lives of average citizens. Very few original investigative journalism segments, mood music behind a number of human interest stories (why?), tonal qualities in reporting which seems more opinionated than unbiased even in the small amount of reporting that is presented. More coverage on Tea Party (used teabags (IMO) and any ridiculous utterance from Republicans does not receive any kind of immediate rebuttal. However, occasionally there is a review a few days later after Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert point out the obvious.

All of my above observations (over a number of years – listener since ’83) have made me wonder who is now writing and editing the actual morning and evening anchor news shows. I am baffled that On The Media relies on polling information from Quinnipiac and Pew (both respectable-but fallible. I worked at one of these polling firms and some questions I had to ask were so skewed I could predict the response I would receive when asked). A recent Pew poll, responding to the cry that NPR is not biased sounded inconclusive in many respects -yet Brook Gladstone (OTM) embraced and interpreted those instances where it was clear NPR had been a bit more thorough. However, what were the questions/how many responded/their demographics/date polled/where people informed they had a choice to not answer any of the questions they weren’t sure about?

In conclusion, NPR, at least the anchor shows are providing much more headline news and FoxNews jargon (you decide, I’m just saying), much less investigative journalism, opinions masked as reporting, a lack of rebuttals at the time of the questionable statements, a regular cadre of mainstream and conservative views from the academy and think tanks who we can guess at their leanings and many more commercial promotions (sponsors), self-promotions (branding) and increased business viewpoints (Wall Street, no labor) so much so that it has become white noise in the morning and evening drives.

I can only dream that one day, that hunger to be different from the mainstream (mostly safe) reporting before NPR went on the air with its YOUNG TURK reporters, returns. It it truly time and needed. Otherwise, we’re sunk with their news and infotainment segments. The in-betweens, I leave alone and understand they are independent programs.

I can only hope someone with some actual liberal or progressive clout reads these posts and sees that many of us recognize that you are wearing flimsy clothing.

Many of the critics who’ve written here want NPR to be a left version of Fox News, i.e., a service that recruits people who think like us to remind us what we think. They’re right that NPR has drifted rightward in recent years, in the sense that it more heavily samples conservative opinion, as has much of the media. But NPR’s great service is the depth of its coverage. Whether the story is civil disorder in Kenya (try hearing about that at NBC or your big-city daily), or Lybian refugees in Sicily, or the actual experiences of Canadians using their national health system, or the views of renowned academic scholars studying climate change, NPR’s coverage compares favorably with that of any news service, including the BBC. Those who want to hear Democracy Now or read the Nation can do so — but getting congenial opinion, on the one hand, and being informed about what’s happening in the world, on the other, are two very different things.

Wow, isn’t it great we live in the United States where all these diverse opinions can be aired and viewed by millions AND we are not tortured or shot for doing so. Wonderful…right, left or center…makes no difference. We are all on this planet together.

NPR stikes me as interesting and informative but increasingly fitting the image more of an establishment organ than an alternative to any of the established political perspectives. In a country and a world increasingly divided into and defined as either right or left it is troubling to watch media in general take up the flag of one side or the other, to the exclusion of reason, fact or even curiosity. I imagine that Mr. Nader’s on-board editor would disapprove of anything not demonstrably left.he good news about NPR is that so far it does not offer Charlie Rosed, whose twenty-minute questions leave little room for answers in a half hour program.